I wrote a new poem! Go here to read the whole thing. Usually I write (well, usually I try to write) on paper, because I take more time with each word, the physical effort of it. Today I had too much to do, and I just opened the posting screen and let the poem all fall out. I knew exactly the image that it should have, but by now (January 2021, still a week after the Capitol insurrection) we're all sick of that image. A little creative Googling, and I found this. Felt right. And just enough of a twist on the original image. (I tried to find a source for it, but couldn't. Whoever created it, fait accompli.)
Anyway, here's the poem.
I’ve been drinking soup out of mugs in the morning
calling it coffee
stretching my mouth wider so that
nobody notices the noodles
These days I feel so sorry for the world
everyone is upset about a faraway foreign government
being overthrown in Washington
I’m just like, at least it’s not your family
This morning my flavor of coffee is my own anxiety
and I’m blowin’ on it right now cause it’s too hot
Needing the simple on/off switch of caffeine
while everything else is too unreliable
Feels a little too much like an abandoned store
at the end of an apocalypse, mobs of moms and incels
ransacking baseball bats and canned vegetables
while I’m patiently waiting in a line that never advances
Me, I’m nothing
selfless self-important something stuck on the way to salvation
trying to feel the pain of the universe
and drown out my own while I’m at it
Me I’m nothing and I like it that way
